Concert Handel, Vivaldi, Zelenka
7:30pm, Sat, 7 Jun 2025
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- Event Details
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Type of event: Concert Start time: 7:30pm Venue: Beaumont St, Hexham See map below Ticket pricing/options: Adult Ticket from £15
Student/Unemployed(in receipt of benefits/Pension Credit) from £7.50
Under 18 FreeTickets: 
Description: 
This is the final concert in this season celebrating Eric Cross’s 40th anniversary as Music Director of the Newcastle Bach Choir. The season’s programmes were chosen to reflect Eric’s particular musical interests, but also those of the choir.
Our first two concerts reflected the choir’s mission of performing Bach cantatas and newly composed British music. The summer concert has a more personal slant, with music by two composers central to Eric: Handel and Vivaldi. The choir has performed several Handel oratorios over the years, including Belshazzar, Israel in Egypt and Messiah. Here he is represented by his Coronation Anthems, written for the crowning of George II in 1727. They include Zadok the Priest, which has been sung at every coronation since.
Eric’s doctoral dissertation was on Vivaldi’s operas, many of them unknown at the time, and he has provided many specially edited scores for performances of them around the world. Our concert will include some Vivaldi arias, for which we are delighted to welcome back soprano and Vivaldi specialist Mhairi Lawson. The choir also perform two rarely heard sacred works: the Credo and Domine ad adiuvandum me.
Finally, the Miserere in C minor by Jan Dismas Zelenka - an exact contemporary of Handel and Vivaldi - was first performed by the choir in 2013. Its highly original opening with dramatic dotted rhythms in the orchestra immediately shows why he was so highly regarded in his day.
